2:00 a.m. Apr. 19, 2001 PDT
Imagine waking up in New York at sunrise, commuting to London for work and returning home to your spouse and kids for dinner.

It is a dream that could be one step closer to reality in about three weeks. On Wednesday, NASA announced that in early May, it will work with Boeing and Micro Craft to test their high-speed creation, the X-43 -- or Hyper-X.

"Remember, the 'X' is for experimental," NASA spokesman Jim Cast said, trying to contain some of the excitement over the new machine.

I strongly doubt that the price of flying on it can be any cheaper than the Concorde. Why? It costs so much to fly supersonically.

Haven't experimental hypersonic a/c been planned before and failed to 'get off the ground?' I don't think this'll be any different at this point. Think of the development costs. Though it would be cool to see/ride on one.

I would image at least a million people a day would take advantage of this
opportunity. The air traffic would be horrible (to say nothing of poor Heathrow )

What will probably happen is this vehicle will be used by NASA and partners to make
space access cheaper. Maybe it will be used for very lon-haul commercial flights, such
as JFK - HKG.

One thing for sure, people will want faster access, and this not being a jet plane,
a new infrastructure will have to be built. Personally, I'm waiting for the teleporters.
They are the safest way to travel, you know!

As much as I would love mankind to finally find a proper environmentally friendly and economical energy substituting oil I don´t expect this hypersonic-project to be reality during my lifetime. And one other oint about it is: What exotic materials will this aircraft be built from? It cannot be constructed from cheap aluminium. I guess such a "Hyper-X" will have an NASA-style price-tag on it. Even in 50 years from now.

Anyway, its nice to hear things a going forward. My wish is all engineering power would be concentrated on finding an endless energy source that can be used after the oil-sheikhs have to declare bancruptcy because the tank is empty.

Yeah I agree that this plane will probably not fly commercially in our lifetime...as it takes forever to deisgn, built, test,..research,...It takes almost a decade to get a conventional airliner up and running from drawings to airline flights...

1.The most abundant element on earth is Oxygen form O2. The earth's crust is made of silicon dioxide which is SiO2. That makes oxygen the most abundant

2.There is plenty of Hydrogen on earth, you are made of it! Water is 2/3 hydrogen.

3.Making hydrogen, let's make this an experiment, take a glass of water and a 6 volt lantern battery. Take 2 pieces of wire, connect one to the positive terminal and another to the negative, do not connect the wires together. Put the wires in the glass of water, don't let them touch. After a while bubbles will form on the wires, the oxygen is on the negative terminal, hydrogen is on the positive. That's how to make hydrogen. The great thing is after going through the engine of a ramjet it usually makes water! So the cycle never ends! Hydrogen is a good readily available material that is self regenerating! Mazda/Ford (aka Toyo Kogyo) have developed a version of their wankel rotary automobile engine that burns hydrogen, the exaust is drinkable water!!! It's time to work on hydrogen as a fuel of the future. However until that works, I'll take my 2 ton gasoline loving Cadillac!

Great if you live in Queens and commute to Southall in West London. Otherwise where's the saving? Traffic in London is slower now than in the days of horse-drawn carts - average speed is 3 and a half miles an hour. And NY always seems worse when I'm there, so who cares if the flight is 6 hours with three or four at each end spent fucking about in stationary taxis or mile long immigration queues, or just one hour in flight with the same three or four at each end.

Anyway, it's an old argument so I won't labour the point. It's just pointless and here is a true fact: no objective market study has ever shown a viable market for an SST, let alone an HST. The market worldwide for a new SST is about 50 aircraft, but with a $200 billion development cost, you're looking at something like $400m development cost PER AIRFRAME. No airline could afford to buy them in any great number. Remember that BA and AF only make a slim profit charging astronomically high fares, and never paid a penny for the aircraft, or spares (including engines) and most of the maintenence was also completely paid for by the British and French gov'ts for most of the aircraft's service life.